


Come Home

by phornex



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Enemies to Friends, Friendship, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Malfoy Manor, PTSD, Platonic Relationships, draco has a lot of feelings, for now, harry's really nice about all of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 02:58:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17716742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phornex/pseuds/phornex
Summary: Years after the war, Draco returns home to the Manor, but finds that the Manor no longer feels like home. When Harry Potter arrives with a possible solution, Draco's not sure if he should take it. Will he ever be able to move forward?





	Come Home

**Author's Note:**

> This was a fic I had sitting in my drafts for ages, and finished one grey Saturday afternoon with the cat pawing at the keyboard. It's un-beta'd. Please enjoy!

Draco stood in the central foyer of Malfoy Manor, staring at a blast mark on the wall. Why had he come back?

He wandered aimlessly through the house. Through the East Gallery to the smoking room, across the library, into the study. Past the bathrooms. Along the House-Elf service stairway. The house was steeped from top to bottom in dust and dark magic, and Draco felt it closing in on him, the deeper into the house he walked. The walls of every room held spell craters and curses. He stopped for a moment in his mother’s morning conservatory, and took a deep breath. He imagined the smell of rose still lingering, although it had been years since she had sat here. He heard a crunch as he stepped further into the room; his mother’s favourite glass figurine, a ballet dancer that twirled in the sunlight, lay shattered under his feet, as if somebody had thrown it in anger.

He retraced his steps to the foyer, and walked along the West Gallery. As he passed the music room, he tried to shut out the sound his imagination supplied him with, of his father playing the piano on a Sunday morning. He moved on, and rested his hand on the next door, his brain catching up with him just in time. The dining room.

Absolutely not.

Autopilot took him, carried him to his own bedroom. He hadn’t slept here in three years, but he expected to feel the same sense of safety, the same sense of home. He looked around at the four-poster bed, the desk still piled high with Hogwarts textbooks, the floorboards caked with dust. And he remembered. He remembered lying in that bed, hearing Nagini slide past his room, wondering if tonight would be the night she would come for him. He remembered sitting at the desk, staring out the window, throwing up every wall of Occlumens he could manage just for five minutes of privacy in his own head. He remembered that if he lifted the dusty floorboard under his bed, he’d find his journal; a notebook that had become so filled with his terror that sometimes it fled from him.

This wasn’t home. This was a nightmare. He had returned to a nightmare.

*

Draco’s feet had brought him to the gardens of Malfoy Manor. He didn’t know how long he’d been there, only that he couldn’t make himself enter the house again.

A cough behind him nearly made him jump out of his own skin. He swore, turned, and found himself face to face with Harry Potter.

“Hi,” Harry said, his expression unreadable to Draco.

Draco stood, dumbfounded. What the fuck was he supposed to do? His stomach filled with a familiar flood of guilt and shame. How stupid he was, to think he could just settle back into Wiltshire and re-integrate with the Wizarding world. How ridiculous to think that people might actually believe him to have changed, when here he was, returning to the fucking Death Eater HQ. The panic rendered him speechless.

Harry shifted on his feet. “Look,” he said, “I’m— I’m not very good at this. I heard you were back, and I thought, well— I had to come up, didn’t I?”

Did he? Malfoy still couldn’t bring himself to speak; every time he opened his mouth, the air dropped out of his chest. Images flashed behind his eyes; Harry, bloodied and broken, their schoolmates twisting in agony on the floors of Malfoy Manor. Panic twisted his guts, and he felt his vision start to tunnel, his breath start to feel heavy in his throat.

Harry noticed. “Christ, Malfoy, I’m sorry. I should have sent you an owl or something. I didn’t know you’d— Fucking hell. Here, come on, sit down,” he motioned to a bench overlooking the front-facing gardens of the Malfoy Estate. Draco closed his eyes. This was fucking awful. He wanted the ground to swallow him whole. But he let himself be guided, and when Potter sat on the bench next to him and produced a flask of water, he took small sips, not daring to look him in the eyes until the static had cleared from his mind. Eventually, and after a few false starts, he found a small voice.

“I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am.”

He stared ahead, miserable. Tears found their way down his dusty face, blurring his view of the Manor. _Good_ , he thought.

Harry sighed, stood up, and then crouched down in front of Draco, so that they were eye-to-eye. “Look, Malfoy, I just wanted to see if you were okay. You— you looked out for us, in the end, and then you disappeared.”

Draco’s internal monologue went blank at Harry’s words. “ _You looked out for us, in the end_.” As if he meant it. As if they were on the same side. He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again.

“Um…”

“But it seems fairly obvious that you’re not okay. Have you been in therapy? Mungo’s has a really good program for post-war trauma, it’s been really effective in treating PTSD, especially for victims of Death Eater— oh, fuck, fucking hell, sorry, Malfoy—” Draco felt the world spinning round him again, felt Harry’s arms around him, and the world fell black and silent.

*

Draco awoke to find himself staring up at the beams of the coved ceiling in his parents’ drawing room. He hadn’t actually spent a lot of time in here as a child, and he hadn’t entered it since coming home again. He expected to feel a wave of painful familiarity — a guilty nostalgia had followed him through every room of the house so far — but instead, he just felt slightly foggy. Comfortable, even. He sighed, and closed his eyes.

Potter cleared his throat, and Draco’s eyes popped open again. He twisted his head to see Potter sitting on the drawing room floor, an apologetic smile on his face.

“Hi. Welcome back. I’m sorry, I hope this is okay, I… well it didn’t look too lived-in, so I thought it might be slightly easier to wake up in than something more... familiar.”

Draco blinked.

That… made sense, actually. Maybe he should have started in the rooms he never saw as a child, rooms that didn’t carry a lifetime of memories.

He didn’t know what to say, so he nodded. Harry continued.

“I’m really sorry, Malfoy—” Draco winced at the apology; it was supposed to be the other way around. He shook his head.

“Okay. Well. Have some water. I did actually come over to talk to you about something, but it can wait until another day, I’ll give you some advance notice next time…”

Draco forced himself to speak. “No,” he groaned, “Now you’ve said that, I’ll want to know what it is. Let me just… sort myself out.” He sat up, and sipped some water. The silence was awkward, but Potter didn’t seem inclined to fill it; he was gazing at the walls, the floor, the pictures, everything but Draco. If he was trying to be polite, he wasn’t being very subtle about it.

Now that he was sitting up, Draco had a chance to look around the room more clearly, and see it through Potter’s eyes. The carvings in the ceiling, the wood-panelled walls. The red, faded rug over the flagstone floor. The hand-crafted mahogany coffee table, the two hard-backed Regency chairs in floral red and grey. Harry was looking intently at a painting of three women dancing around a white horse.

“Why don’t the paintings in here move?”

“What?”

“All the paintings in your house move. Everything’s magic. Why aren’t these?”

Draco rolled his eyes. “They’re not all magic, Potter. The place is full of Muggle art.”

“Oh. Okay. But… why? Your family hate Muggles.”

“Yes, but they don’t mind stealing from them either.” Draco finished his water and sat back against the chaise longue. “Or bribing them. Until the 1600s my family spent a long time sweet-talking or terrifying the Muggle aristocracy. Half the stuff in this house used to belong to some Muggle royal or other.”

“Weird. Bet the British Museum would love to have a dig around in here.”

“Good point, maybe I can give it all to them.”

Potter frowned. “You’d really get rid of it?”

Draco shot Potter a look. “I’m not interested in holding on to much more of my family’s legacy than I have to. It’s complicated. I’ll figure it out.”

“Okay. Yeah. I mean, fair enough. So, um…”

Draco gave him a few seconds, but curiosity got the better of him. “You said you came here to talk to me about something.”

“Oh!” a look of relief passed across Harry’s face, followed by an expression of uncertainty. “Yes. Well. I heard that you were back at the Manor but that nobody had really seen you. I was worried about you. After the war, I kind of shut myself away a lot as well, and I know you… have… a lot to deal with,” he faltered, but Malfoy let out a mirthless chuckle.

“You could say that, yeah.”

“Yeah. Well. I’m working up at Hogwarts now. Defence Against the Dark Arts.”

“I thought you wanted to be an Auror?”

“What? Oh, well yeah, when I was a kid. I wanted to be a fireman when I was 10, too, but I don’t fancy that much now either. And you wanted to be a professional Seeker, I seem to remember.”

Draco grimaced. "I don’t think I ever really did want that, you know, I just wanted..."  _something else, something other than the pressure of this family and this legacy and this obligation..._ “something other than all this,” he waved his hand, “But fair point. So, teaching?”

“Yeah! Yeah, it’s fun. I mean, the Dark Arts as we think of them are less of a worry these days,” they gave each other a knowing glance, “but magic still comes with risks, and it’s good to see students get a more rounded education than we got. And I’m trying to incorporate some history and social studies into it as well. It’s… yeah, it’s great.”

“That does sound like more your speed than being an Auror. I can’t see that following rules and doing paperwork would appeal to you much.”

“No, yeah exactly. Um.”

Draco left the silence open this time. Potter was obviously struggling to say something.

“So, Malfoy.”

“Yes, Potter.”

“This is actually why I was coming to see you. I wondered if… Okay. Well. The thing is, Hogwarts is looking for a Potions master. Slughorn’s ancient now, and, um. Well. The job listing will go out in the Prophet tomorrow, and I wanted to tell you that I think you… should, um… apply.”

Draco stared at Harry for a long time. Harry, to his credit, had the sense to look at the carpet, which meant he couldn’t see the range of emotions that Draco was sure were passing across his face.

“Potter, I… that’s very thoughtful of you, but I don’t think I’d be very welcome back at Hog—”

“‘Course you would. McGonagall’s head now, and she knows you wouldn’t… that you’re not… well, she says you’d be very welcome.”

“What do you mean, ‘she says’? You spoke to her already?”

“Ah, yeah, well… I thought I should check in with her, before I came to see you. Put in a good word, you know, make sure she’d be on board.” Harry smiled, “She wanted me to thank you for your generous donation toward the Hogwarts rebuilding fundraiser all those years ago.”

Draco spluttered. “That was anonymous! I wasn’t trying to—”

“No no, I know, I know. It was anonymous. But it was also three payments, each exactly the right amount that meant Hogwarts wouldn’t have to pay any Gringotts tax on each donation. She reckons only a Malfoy would have thought of that,” Harry shot him a huge grin then, and the glint in his eye did something strange to Draco’s concentration. He decided to ignore it.

“I don’t have any teaching experience. All the kids will want to ask me about the war. They’ll all have preconceptions based on what their parents have told them.”

“Same, on all counts,” Harry said, shrugging. “Have you got any tea?”

“No idea. I think the House Elves Disappeared everything before they left. Your situation and mine are not the same, you know that.”

Harry sighed, and nodded. “I do know that. But I also know it’s not half as bad in real life as it is in your head. People are moving on. They might move on a bit faster if the Ministry had any interest in acknowledging the social causes of the war—” Harry made a face, and Draco got the distinct impression that Harry’s relationship with the Ministry wasn’t as cosy as the Prophet had made it out to be, “—but that’s a different conversation. What I’m saying is, I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“Your judgement on what is or isn’t a good idea is very different to mine.”

“That’s why I’m asking you in person, because it would never have occurred to you otherwise.”

Draco scrunched his eyes up. He didn’t want to admit it, but it did have an appeal.

Harry leaned forward, and patted Draco on the shoulder. “You have a think about it,” he said. “It’s just started raining. I’m going to go and see if I can find some tea in this place.”

Draco closed his eyes and listened to Harry’s footsteps get further and further away. The rain pattered on the windows, and Draco felt his muscles soften. The knowledge that somebody else was in the house had made it less intimidating. He didn’t know how he would cope when Harry left, but for now, it helped.

*

Draco must have drifted off, because when he opened his eyes again, Harry was walking into the room with two cups and a pot of something that smelled a lot like cinnamon and flowers.

“Here we go, I found some fancy teas in the conservatory. Your mum must have hidden some there.”

Draco smiled. Maybe he hadn’t imagined the smell of roses.

Harry continued talking, as he poured the tea. “So, why did you come back, Draco? From France? I thought your family — well, you and your mum — were staying out there permanently?”

“Mother is. She’s moved in with the Zabini family; they all relocated to a place just outside Beauxbatons. People still don’t like or trust them, but it’s not as bad as it is in the UK.”

“So why didn’t you stay over there?”

Draco shrugged. “I missed home.” He had. He had missed the beech forests around Wiltshire, carpets of bluebells and sparkling green canopies in spring. He had missed Diagon Alley, before the war, eating chestnuts and gazing into Christmas window displays. He had missed flying over flat farmland in the pouring English rain, ducking into hedgerows and watching deer. He’d missed...

“The Manor?”

Draco pressed his lips together for a moment. “No. Not the Manor. I went… I went to Kings Cross Station, recently.” He had wanted to go somewhere familiar, but somewhere he wouldn’t be recognised. He’d sat in a French cake shop overlooking the station, watched people milling around and gazing up at the departure boards. It had changed since he was a boy, but Draco still remembered walking through from the Apparition point, holding his mother’s hand, listening to his father mutter about having to walk through the vast swathes of commuting Muggles, and how Hogwarts should make allowances for established wizarding families. When he’d finished his cake, Draco had walked to the wall for Platform 9 ¾, stepped through, and stood on the empty platform for a long time, staring down the track.

“I go there sometimes, too,” said Harry, snapping Draco out of his memories. “It’s nice to just sit there, watch the world go by. To see the whole place full of life.” Draco thought he noticed a flicker of something sad and unspoken across Harry’s expression, but he didn’t pursue it.

Harry sighed, and gazed out the window. “Man, it’s really coming down out there.”

“Yeah,” Draco murmured. He remembered flying through rain like this, before the war. It was something he thought about a lot now, every time it rained. He turned to Harry. “Do you want to go flying?”

For a split-second, Harry looked at Draco as if he were as mad, but then a huge grin split his face. And then they were both soaring up above Malfoy Manor, rain pelting down on their full-body water-repelling charms. Draco hovered for a moment, listened to the white static of rain touching magic, and the gentle hiss of water and wind rushing through the gardens of the Manor.

*

An hour and a half later, they had returned to the Manor, chased home by the encroaching dusk. Harry had made another pot of tea, and lit the fire, and now he was pulling his coat back on. “I should head off,” he said, “I’m sorry to have surprised you, I’ll owl ahead next time.”

Draco’s heart leapt at the thought of a next time. Harry continued, “Do think about that offer. I think it would be great for Hogwarts, to have you there. You’d be very welcome. To me, anyway.” With that, Harry nodded his head and walked out the door, leaving Draco staring at the fire.

*

_Dear Professor McGonagall,_

_Please find enclosed my application for the position of Potions Master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. My CV is attached; of particular relevance are the details of my own exemplary Potions achievements during my time studying at Hogwarts, and the work I have produced since. I have continued the study and practice of potion making, and I have included two recent papers in this application: a comparative study on dry and fresh lavender on calming draughts, and an analytic report on the effects of Felix Felicis on human physiology._

_I understand that my application may be a surprise to some members of the Board. I am available for interview with anybody who wishes to meet me in person. I hope that my recent professional and charity work overseas go some way to act as a character reference in my favour. On a personal note, I would very much enjoy the opportunity to return to Hogwarts in a teaching capacity, and to be part of an institution which has always endeavoured to promote cooperation and inclusion between magical and non-magical communities._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Draco Malfoy_

*

**Author's Note:**

> The original idea for this fic came to me while I was visiting a town that holds a lot of bad memories - I was furious that it had stayed the same, while I had changed so much - but it veered off course once I started writing it, and Draco's mental and emotional response became much more intense as I started to examine it. Thanks for reading!


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